Allied With The Devil's Dog
by Alpha Vegetable
Summary: ME2. Paragon Femshep. Why did Shepard act so cool on Horizon? This is how I thought of the whole situation - liberties taken, naturally. Reviews/criticisms welcome.


_Author's Note: I've been playing ME2 since the beginning of the month (not all the time, obviously) and enjoyed/endured the rollercoaster of emotion Bioware has put it's loyal gamers through. After a few playthroughs, obviously, one's attention drifts a bit, and I've been reading what other people have thought of the game. It seems to be two camps: OMG I love Kaidan no matter what…. And ooooh! That Kaidan just blew me off! The bastard! This fic is more about my own thoughts from my first two playthroughs, and what my Paragon Shepard, so accustomed to saving everybody whatever it takes, would do in these circumstances. _

**Allied With The Devil's Dog**

Shepard stared at the smooth metal roof of the bedchamber the Illusive Man had so thoughtfully given her for the night. A dull ache spread beneath her ribs as she thought over the recent trip from the space station she had privately labelled 'Lazarus Central'.

'_Two years? I've been gone that long?'_ she had asked quietly, an unexpected fear suddenly making her eyes smart.

Jacob had corrected her, oblivious to her mental state. Two years and sixteen days. His earlier words on the station also came up to mind. Meat and tubes: that what he had said she was. Anyone else would have buried her. Perpetually in a coma – or worse.

She had died, actually died. For so long, she had been accustomed to being the indestructible Shepard – more focussed on saving her companions than herself. Hell, hadn't a Reaper crashed on her and she'd walked away with a grin?

Now that she was alone, she could think of him. Kaidan Alenko. The man who she had fought alongside with in the battle of the Citadel, the same shy and funny man who tripped over his words, smashed geth with his mind, and invariably forced her to make the decisions in their relationship even though she had said time and time again that he had stopped being a subordinate a long time ago – granted, the whole rank thing was tricky. How had those two years treated him? Had he moved on? Was he even alive? If she had died, so could he. She didn't want to acknowledge the possibility, but she had to. Jacob had said that Pressly and a handful of staff had died aboard the Normandy, but that the majority had walked away; including the aliens.

A thought occurred to her. How would Kaidan view her unwilling alliance with Cerberus? She dismissed it. It wasn't important at this time. The possible Reaper threat was. Even if Kaidan was no longer in the universe, she still had to save it, because of the memory of him.

* * *

She had returned from her second 'conversation' with that eerie Illusive Man. While she didn't trust him as far as she could throw him – and in holographic form, that was diddly squat – she had to admit he had, so far, been 100% correct. Human colonies – or at least, the human inhabitants of human colonies – had been abducted by the thousands. The agents of this incredible magic act were an elusive race called the Collectors, known only to deal a little with slavers and mercenaries to acquire genetic rarities. That was enough to raise Shepard's protective hackles, but the distinct possibility that they were working for the Reapers made an alliance with Cerberus the only possible choice. Not an easy one, for sure, but Shepard considered herself sufficiently moral fibred enough to question his every motive and ensure she was doing everything for the right reasons. Besides, it would be very satisfying to actually cheese him off.

She would have to do that with everyone, actually. Joker had surprised her by appearing in a Cerberus uniform, apparently unfazed by the notion of working for Satan incarnate. Previously, she had given him every allowance for his more unattractive peculiarities, knowing pain was a constant in his life, but she had come to realise that he was a basically selfish, uncaring person. Still understandable, but it had shocked her still. Nobody's loyalties were certain. Dr. Chakwas puzzled her, though it had relieved her to hear her curt reproof: _'I'm not working for Cerberus, I'm working for you…' etc. _Gabby and Ken in engineering seemed perfectly normal – well, as normal as Shepard could get, anyhow. Kelly Chambers seemed friendly – in such a way that slightly reminded her of a preppy Liara. It didn't matter. The crew could be comprised of tamed Creepers, for all she cared. She was in this to save the galaxy, not make friends. Look how that had turned out last time.

She had worked in a way to ask about Kaidan this time. Using the cover of wanting a crew she could trust, she had asked about Garrus and Wrex before asking curtly: '_What happened to Kaidan Alenko?'_

He was alive – that meant a lot. And a commander, too – she smiled at the irony. Commander Alenko, yes, that sounded good. Ash would have to find another nickname… if she were alive. She frowned. She hadn't exactly considered the previous mission a suicide run, but Ash had died, and Wrex had come perilously close to it. According to the Illusive Man, this would be even more difficult. That meant more lives would be lost.

Just as Kaidan had moved on in rank, he may have moved on in other ways. After all, she was dead. Till death do us part and all that. It hurt, but Shepard was realistic enough to know she wasn't the only female to see how attractive he was. Once she was gone, it would have been natural to move on with his romantic life. She wouldn't have wanted him to pine after her for eternity if she had stayed dead, after all. She wanted the best for him. And, at the moment, as she was, heading a suicide mission, reanimated in ways she didn't understand yet, and two years out of the loop, Shepard forced herself to admit that _she_ wasn't the best for him.

Those months together spanning the time of their mission and afterwards, Shepard had almost always called the shots in their relationship. She knew she had to do this one more time: she was calling the end. Not because she didn't love him, oh, no. It was more that she _did_ love him, and wanted him as far away from this whole mess as possible. Take him with her on a suicide mission? No, he had to live, with or without her. Embroil him in the morality quagmire that was her uneasy compact with Cerberus and The Illusive Man? Kaidan had always been something of her morality compass. There was no way she would compromise who he was. And she wouldn't make some big fuss for her own satisfaction that he hadn't forsworn all women after she died. She would simply step back into the shadows and let him go on with his own life. She loved him enough to do that. She loved him enough to _force_ him to do that. Hopefully, she wouldn't have to. All she had to do was not cross paths with him so she could remain dead in his mind. She both wanted and feared that.

* * *

Again, she returned to her thoughts as she sat at her desk and considered the picture of Kaidan Alenko some thoughtful Cerberus agent had placed there. She had just recruited Archangel, who, to her immense surprise and initial joy, had turned out to be Garrus Vakarian, her old team-mate. As she stretched back wearily in her chair, she reviewed the bleak events which had followed. A rush of sadness as she perceived the tiredness in her Turian friend – there had been a distinct tone of fatalism and disillusionment in almost every sentence he uttered. Understandable, of course – she felt much the same – but still, it was almost painful to remember the hopeful attitude he had displayed when Saren, the geth, and Sovereign had been routed.

And then the shock and absolute fury she had felt when Garrus had succumbed to a missile from that damned gunship. When everything unfriendly had been rendered smoking and dead, that vision of Garrus prone and in a puddle of his own blue blood was burned into her brain, never to be removed. She had given up, momentarily, moving to his body and gently placing her hand on his shoulder, when he seemed to rouse, choking and drowning in his own fluids. Instantly she had snapped into action, and Garrus had fought to survive long enough to be stabilised by the doctors.

The relief she felt when he had interrupted a pseudo-sympathetic talk from Jacob almost had her smile reach from ear to ear. A few bantering sentences and she had almost felt transported back to the old Normandy. Garrus had affirmed to her his loyalty, and she had expressed her gratitude at his presence, particularly in light of her unavoidable tie to Cerberus. Garrus had even seemed a little pleased at the idea of pitting himself back against the Reapers and whatever else which was allied to them. Shepard drew enormous comfort from his presence, but couldn't help compile a mental list on how many points Garrus had changed in the two years she had been 'away'.

The 'good' thing was, the way Garrus was so damaged, she needn't hesitate to risk him along with herself in this suicide mission. He would be as contented as it was possible for him. It didn't mean she was ready to risk anyone else she loved.

* * *

Seeing Kaidan again on Horizon had been … unbelievable. When the Illusive Man had said Kaidan was on Horizon, and the Collectors were there, it had seemed like her heart had stopped beating. Though outwardly unaffected, she waited in agony as the Normandy Mark 2 travelled through the intervening star systems, and was in no less pain when they landed, hoping against hope Mordin's precautions would work. Shepard had moved swiftly through the colony, cutting every Collector down swiftly and ruthlessly, and scanning every colonist in stasis in the hope Kaidan hadn't been loaded aboard the immense Collector ship already.

By the time she had helped defeat that monstrous conglomerate husk-thing her nerves had felt so strung out she was almost ready to bawl. It had been almost the last straw as she watched the Collector ship flee with half the colonists and goodness-knows-who-else on board, and that whiny Alliance-phobic engineer she had stumbled across before darting from the shadows to accuse her of not using her immense godlike powers to stop the monolithic giant. If only.

And then Kaidan had walked over, summarizing her military career for Delan in a strange, unbelieving voice. Shepard's emotions blossomed within her before she crammed them into an internal box and sat on the lid. She schooled her face to be impassive as they shared a long gaze, fearful her thoughts were all-too-easily discerned in her eyes, before something snapped and they were in each other's arms, clinging for a moment before withdrawing and allowing other emotions to have their say.

After the initial shock of seeing her alive, Kaidan had been angry, angrier than she had ever seen him. Her half-formed plan thrust itself into the front of her brain – he's moved on; you were dead, remember; you're _not_ going to drag him into this – and she adopted a fairly light tone. This made him even more incensed as he threw their relationship into the conversation, before going off in a slightly muddled rant about Cerberus and what they might have done to her, of how she might have changed.

As calmly as she could, she gave him bare facts – yes, she had actually died – and now she was trying to save the galaxy. If she had to make a pact with the devil, or in this case, the devil's dog, so be it. It was not a philosophy Kaidan could ever adopt, and she knew it.

Garrus had felt sufficiently furious with Kaidan on her behalf to try and get Kaidan to understand, but she knew it was a lost cause. It was possible, she supposed, to love someone without knowing them, but she knew Kaidan. She memorised his features again, contorted in anger as they were, to keep the memory alive in her mind for the times coming ahead. All too soon he was walking away from her for good; but not before he looked back and asked her to be careful. Something in him still thought well of her – she would take comfort in that.

Once aboard the Normandy, Garrus had been unsure of the protocols in dealing with a supposedly heart-broken human, and had gone to the main battery. Grunt had shrugged and left to go back to his usual lair, possibly to relive the 'glorious' battle they had just fought. She ignored both the curious and sympathetic glances from both Joker and Kelly respectively.

The inevitable talk with the Illusive Man had left her furious. Who the hell was he, to play around with the lives of those who meant the most to her? All this would do is make her even more intractable to work with, she decided. Again, it illustrated how dangerous it was for Kaidan to be associated with her. So when the Illusive Man had asked whether she had put her past behind her, she had answered simply: '_Yes.'_

* * *

Things were speeding up as they were going to the end, now. She had pretty much assembled her crew, obtained most of their loyalty through various ways, and was now contemplating the quandary of how to safely navigate the Omega 4 relay. The Illusive Man had found her a dead Reaper which she was shortly to board. It didn't sound like a cakewalk, though – the Cerberus crew detailed to explore the ruin had lost contact with the base early on. Something bad was still in that ship, and in a few hours, she was going to find out what.

Still, that left her a couple of hours to deal with. She had stared at the fish until she had gone cross eyed; she had even tried to smash the Sovereign model ship under heel before giving it up – far too well constructed, dammit; and staring at Kaidan's picture was only making the silence more deafening. She found her steps directing her outside her door and into the elevator, and, when they opened, on the short walk to Life Support. The Drell assassin had not been what she expected, but she had felt a remarkable lack of judgement from him and in turn, respected his point of view.

By the time Joker advertised their arrival at the wrecked Reaper, both Thane and Shepard had given succour to each other, holding hands for comfort and talking about two very important people in their lives and the actions they had taken because of them. Sometimes, all you need is a listener.


End file.
